


Pin Your Heart On My Sleeve

by inlovewithnight



Category: Bandom, Black Cards, Cobra Starship
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-10
Updated: 2011-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-27 04:08:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Falling in love with Gabe wasn't in Bebe's plan. Hangovers, doughnuts, Las Vegas, and luck have other ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pin Your Heart On My Sleeve

**Author's Note:**

> Written for bandgirlsbang 2011. Please see [this post](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/1848665.html) for three wonderful pieces of accompanying art!

It all starts with a hangover.

Bebe wakes up still wearing her club clothes, the pillow smeared from top to bottom with her makeup. She gropes blindly for her alarm clock on the bedside table, only to smack her hand against a wall. She's either lying the wrong way in her bed, or she's not at home.

Then she notices the feeling of someone else's feet pressed up against the backs of her knees. Not at home, then. She opens her eyes enough to peer around and breathes a soft sigh of relief as she recognizes Heather's room. Okay. Falling asleep at Heather's is no big deal. Safe and sound and probably no stupid decisions made, plus she has clothes here. And, most critically right now, she knows where the bathroom is.

The nausea doesn't hit until she moves, and the headache until she gets to the bathroom and turns on the light. She uses the toilet, washes her face, stares at herself in the mirror and confirms that she still wants to die, then goes back to the bedroom.

Thank God for Heather's thick, heavy curtains; being in the dark again helps. She picks her way around the tiny space left by the bed and dresser, hunting down her heels and purse from the night before, then the backpack that she'd brought all her stuff over in to get ready. Heather's still asleep, burrowed down under her pillow with the comforter pulled up to her ears. Lying down again is extremely tempting, but Bebe's pretty sure that if she does, she is never getting up again, and she has shit to do today.

She changes back into jeans and a t-shirt from her bag, wadding up the sweat-smelling, sleek little things she'd worn dancing and shoving them to the bottom, shoes on top. Her hair is probably a natural disaster, but nobody will look twice at that on a Saturday morning in the city. She'll get to the subway, get home, and become human enough to get her shit taken care of. She has a plan.

The plan gets modified before she even makes it to the lobby. The stairwell has windows in it, letting sunlight stab through her eyes directly into her brain, and there is just no way she can face that for three blocks without coffee. No way. Sunlight is _evil_.

"My sworn enemy," she mutters, clutching the straps of her backpack in her fists as she starts toward Heather's corner Starbucks. Thank God for the coffee-shop-to-person ratio in this city. It's her only chance this morning.

She stops on the sidewalk, squinting through the windows at the line and fumbling in her purse for her credit card and her phone. Two messages from Pete and four from Spencer, she can ignore those, where the _fuck_ is her card, why is the sun so goddamn bright, she just wants a caramel macchiato and maybe a gun to shoot herself in the face and end this fucking misery--

"Bumble Bee. What are you doing here?"

She drops her phone, her purse and backpack doing their best to slip from her fingers as well. "Fuck!" Dropping to her knees to grab the phone hurts, not just the impact but the rolling wave of nausea that goes through her, and she groans in misery, dragging her hair off her forehead with her free hand and glaring up at the jackass who caused all this.

Gabe Saporta looks down at her with a smile that immediately clicks over into concern. "Holy shit, kiddo, you okay?"

"I'm fine." Her phone case is cracked. Son of a bitch. She shoves it back into her purse and gets to her feet, biting down on her tongue against the roiling of her stomach. "I need coffee."

"You need more than that," he says, taking her backpack in one hand and wrapping the other around her shoulder to guide her away from the door. "Shitty Starbucks crap isn't going to fix the kind of hangover you've got."

"How do you know what kind of hangover I've got?"

"I'm an expert on the subject."

"Then why are you depriving me of coffee?" She suspects that she sounds like a whiny kid, but she doesn't really care. She wants to die or she wants coffee, and he's probably going to stop her from having either of those things.

"Because what will _really_ make you feel better is if you combine the coffee with protein and carbs and grease. Trust me."

"You're taking me to a diner?" That is the worst plan she's ever heard. "If I eat, I'm going to get sick. Probably all over you."

"There's an art to the hangover meal. I'll coach you through it. This place is fucking awesome, you'll thank me."

"Will you also pay?"

"I see how it is." He pulls a pair of sunglasses from his pocket, unfolds them, and sets them on her nose. "But yeah. I'm buying."

She adjusts the earpieces where they've caught on her hair and squints at the street, testing their effect on the light. "Then lead on."

**

Gabe hitches her backpack higher on his shoulder and frowns at the door to the diner, then traces his fingers cautiously over the letters of the sign visible through the glass. CLOSED. "Huh."

"You made me walk six blocks to a place that isn't even open?"

"I forgot it's Saturday." Gabe steps back, squinting through the window as if that's going to make the place suddenly be open. "I guess they're good Jews. Better than me, anyway."

"You took me away from caffeine," Bebe says, staring at him over the tops of the sunglasses. "I'm dying here, and you're a bad Jew, so I just walked six blocks away from caffeine."

"Something like that, yeah. C'mon. There's another place like two blocks over from here."

"I hate you so much."

"Just trust me."

"I already trusted you once and look where it got me."

He rolls his eyes and starts walking away. She falls in step less because she wants to keep walking than because he still has her backpack and nothing is open on that block anyway. The sun keeps getting _brighter_ , which should be against some kind of law, and she's grateful for the sunglasses. She still hates him, though.

He comes to a stop again. "Here."

"This is a bakery."

"Yes."

"A bakery is not a diner."

"No, but it has doughnuts."

"You said protein and grease and--"

"Doughnuts trump all of those. They're my secret weapon." He grins down at her and winks, pushing the door open and stretching his arm over her head to hold it. "Just between you and me."

**

It's not like she hasn't spent time with Gabe before, but it's never been one-on-one. When they were in the studio together there were producers, and when they were just hanging out there were friends, and there was always Pete, no matter what. Pete's been leaning on Gabe pretty heavily for as long as Bebe has known either of them. Status normal, as far as she knows, is the two of them joined at the douchery.

This, though. This is just him and her, coffee and doughnuts, and attempts at conversation while they stand leaning against the wall in the back corner of the bakery. They would have to punch an old lady, a super-adorable couple, or a skinny guy with a small dog in his lap in order to get one of the tables, and neither of them is that hardcore.

"I would take them out if I wasn't so miserable," she mumbles into her coffee.

"Which ones?" Gabe slides his fingers into the little sleeve of waxed paper and pulls his doughnut out hooked on two of them. He makes a face and tries to lick streaks of chocolate off his skin without dropping the doughnut.

She studies the table again. "The dog might bite. And the old lady has a cane. So I guess the two girls."

"I think they're on a morning-after date, dude. Don't harsh their glow."

"Their glow is occupying a table that could be mine."

"Drink your coffee."

"Don't tell me what to do."

He laughs and holds the doughnut out to her, chocolate rubbing off on his skin all over again. "Here. This'll make you feel better."

She makes a face but takes a bite, groaning a little as the frosting melts on her tongue. "Fuck, that's good."

"Told you. This place is awesome." He takes a bite as well and chews slowly, then gives the rest of it a sad look. "Only one, though, or I'll get too fat for my stage pants."

She rolls her eyes and leans back against the wall, trying to give the guy with the dog the evil eye. "Can't I get one morning off from thinking about that?"

"Damn right." He sighs and hands her the other doughnut, polishing the first one off in three quick bites and talking around them while he chews. "So you guys are off on more club shows soon, huh?"

"Yeah. He's got us all over the place. East Coast, then LA."

He nods and licks at his fingers, frowning and looking around for napkins that don't appear. "Dammit."

She hides a smile, watching him wipe his fingers on his jeans like it's the worst part of his day so far. "You should come out and see a few gigs."

"Maybe." He shoots her a crooked smile and reaches out, plucking his sunglasses from her face and slipping them onto his own. "Think you're ready to toughen up?"

"No." She sighs and straightens up, draining the last of her coffee. "But I can if I have to, and it's a long way back to Staten Island."

"You've gotta get your ass into the city, B."

"I've gotta do a lot of things." She smiles at him, shoving her hands into her pockets. "Thanks for breakfast."

"Whoever you crashed with last night should've provided. Not a gentleman, B. Drop him."

For a minute that doesn't make any sense, but when she gets it, it's like a cherry bomb going off in her stomach, only _awesome_. Gabe Saporta fishing for information on her life. She hadn't seen that coming.

"Not a gentleman at _all_ ," she says, widening her eyes and grabbing for her backpack. "You have no idea. See you soon!"

**

Bebe likes Pete. She really does. Sometimes she wants to punch him in the throat, but all in all, he's pretty much the best combination of big brother, mentor, bartender, and unpaid therapist she could ask for.

He's also a walking library of stories that make her want to throw things at him until he stops talking.

"There was this one time," he says, leaning back in his chair and laughing, the really loud laugh that shows all of his teeth and that she hadn't heard for the first time until they'd been working together for almost three months. "This one time, me and Andy and Patrick, we--"

He's beginning to tell the Fall Out Boy stories, tour stories and award-show stories and studio stories and general crazy-stupid-rock-star-bullshit stories that she wouldn't believe except that she Googled some of them and they seemed to be true. No reason to believe that the rest of them aren't.

She knows that it's a good thing for him to be able to talk about all of those times. It means he's healing, moving forward, not mired down in the pit of despair and gloom and depression-beard that he'd been in before she met him, and that had barely lightened to despair and sarcasm and really ugly hats by the time she did. She's glad he's feeling better. She really likes having him sometimes come into the studio in just a normal good mood, not a depressive slump and not a manic jag. He's turned out to be just a flat-out really _fun_ guy.

And he makes her so jealous she can't even see sometimes, because he had _everything_ she wants, every bit of it, and she isn't seeing any of the benefits here and now.

It's such a petty, stupid way to feel that she probably should just excuse herself from the hotel room and jump off a balcony.

She _wants_ , that's all. She wants so much. It isn't dignified and it isn't ladylike but fuck all of that, she wants and it's so close. She can see it and reach for it and it's _just_ past the tips of her fingers.

And he just keeps talking. Like the world is fair.

"Be patient, B," he told her once, after another round of _We do want to release it, but could you make a few changes?_. "You've gotta think like a shark. Gotta keep swimming and bide your time."

"That's not how sharks work at all," she'd replied, and he ran off to do something else and left her alone in the office for like an hour with nowhere to go and nobody to pick her up, and after that she made sure she never, ever left her phone at the hotel.

She's not a shark. She's something else. She just can't figure out what yet.

**

Then the little tour's over and she's dropped back on her ass in New York, sitting in her parents' living room or on Heather's couch, talking about music instead of making it. She doesn't even have producing for the girls to keep her busy, because they're too busted-ass broke for studio time. Pete's busy with kid stuff. Spencer's on some kind of bro-retreat with Nate. She's _bored_.

"Am I just decorative?" she asks Pete, in a phone call that devolved from hey-how's-it-going to shouting much faster than it should have. "Arm candy for you to haul around to these stupid pointless showcases that never go anywhere?"

"Calm down." He has his talking-to-the-toddler voice on and if they were in the same room she would slap him for it. "You know perfectly well that's not--"

"I don't know anything! I don't get any information! You tell me what you want to, when you want to, I never fucking know!"

"That's not even true."

"Fuck you. Fuck you and fuck your band and fuck your stupid..." Throwing the phone sends it clattering off the wall and down behind her dresser. It takes ten minutes to dig it out, and when she does, the case is cracked all over again, the brand-new case that replaced the one she broke the morning she saw Gabe.

She runs her thumb over the sharp edge of the plastic and hisses when it actually bites in. Fuck. That hurt. She pops the case off and tosses it aside, then sucks the blood off her skin. Stupid POS phone. Stupid asshole Pete. Stupid...life.

She knows that she's acting like a petulant child, but right now she _feels_ like a petulant child, so fine.

Her phone buzzes insistently, over and over again until she gives in and looks. Two messages from Pete telling her he's sorry but that she also needs to suck it up and deal, and one from Gabe that says _Wentz wants me to moderate. Do I have to? You're a big girl._

She grits her teeth and stalks over to her closet, digging past her day clothes and her stage outfits for her club clothes. Tighter, sleeker, tinier. Higher heels. She wants eyes on her tonight.

She texts Heather from in front of the mirror, asking her to meet her in an hour, then sends a message to Gabe. _You don't have to do anything. But if you want, you can buy me a drink._

He hasn't answered by the time she and Heather meet. She shakes off the sting and goes straight back to the bar, keeping her walk to a slow almost-strut so anyone who wants to look can take their time. She's going to drink and dance and party until they close down the place. She's young and even if she isn't going to be famous after all because Pete is a jerk, she can still be _this_.

She's three drinks in and at least ninety minutes on the dance floor by the time she checks her phone again. Gabe's message is blinking stark and alone in her inbox. _Two drinks, even. Where are you?_

She sends back the name of the club and heads out to the floor again, even though her feet are aching and the lights are spinning at the edges of her vision. Some proud, stubborn impulse keeps her out there no matter what the DJ puts on, an awareness of exactly how good she'll look under the lights when Gabe walks in and scans the crowd.

She sees him first, as it turns out; she steps back as a song ends and runs her hands through her hair, reveling in the sheer sensation of the sweat-heavy strands between her fingers. She can feel her makeup running down her face, her legs are shaking, she wants to laugh at nothing and kiss a stranger. Then she looks up and he's standing there at the edge of the floor, his eyes tracking slowly, finding her just as she draws in a breath.

He waves at her, a little spread of his fingers like a kid. He's dressed all in black, something she's never seen on him before. It works. Fuck, it works.

She crosses the floor as fast as she can without tripping over her heels and grabs his hand. "Dance with me."

"I thought you wanted drinks."

"Dance first." She twists her fingers around his wrist, pressing her other palm to his and pulling him out to the floor. "Unless you don't think you can keep up."

"Is that a challenge, B?"

The beat starts, just fast enough that her heartbeat picks up to match it. "Just dance with me."

**

Somewhere around between midnight and last call she decides that yes, there's a very good chance she's not going home solo tonight. Heather's already run into her on-again off-again, texted Bebe that she's out, and disappeared. Gabe isn't showing any signs of doing the same.

Her head is full of light and her hand is on his thigh. He isn't moving away. He's leaning into her, nuzzling at her throat. She tilts her head to give him better access and tries to think of something to say. It needs to be clever and mature and sexy and knowing.

"Fuck," he whispers against her neck. "Your tits are fucking amazing."

She pulls back to look at him. "Really? That's the best you've got?"

He grins, heavy-lidded and smirky and he's _such_ a dick. She should slap him and walk out. "That's nowhere near the best, but it's sincere."

"I hate you."

"You don't." He walks his fingers up her arm from wrist to elbow and she leans in closer again. "You really don't, B."

"Let's dance some more."

"That really what you want?"

Her blood's picking up again, heartbeat racing until she feels like she needs to dance or sing or grab his hand and run down the street. "You can't keep up?"

He rolls his eyes and gestures for her to lead the way. She downs the rest of her drink and does, feeling the his eyes on her back, the music sinking into her bones, the lights sliding over her skin. There are a million dance-music clichés about a night that lasts forever, and right now she believes every single one.

"This is what music is for," she tells him, looking up at the way the strobe light breaks his face apart. He can't hear her, she can tell, but when he pulls her against him and starts to move, they fit together like they're meant to, and she knows that he believes it, too.

**

Bebe wakes up with Gabe's head on her chest, drool running down between her boobs and his hair up her nose.

"Gross," she mumbles, pushing at his shoulders until he snorts and rolls away, flopping onto the mattress. "You spit on me. Gross."

He opens his eyes a crack, peering at her in what seems to be honest confusion. "Good morning?"

"Hi." She sits up, holding the blanket to her chest in an effort to both regain some modesty and mop up the spit. _Gross_. "What time is it?"

"I don't..." He reaches across her and picks up the alarm clock from the bedside table. "Ten-thirty. Shit."

"That's early for you, isn't it?"

"Sort of. Not really. I don't know. Shit."

She laughs a little, stopping and wincing as something invisible kicks her in the head and the stomach at once. "Oh, God."

"Did I even end up buying you those drinks?"

"I have no idea." She gets to her feet carefully, dragging the blanket off the bed with her. It covers her front okay, but there's no way she's going to manage the coordination to get it wrapped around her waist. This is a special kind of humiliating. "Fuck."

"Bathroom's that way." He points and gets to his feet as well, which confirms what she pretty much already knew, which is that he's naked, too. She remembers things about that nakedness. Doing things with that nakedness. No, _this_ is the special kind of humiliating. "I'll get coffee going and find the painkillers."

"Do we have to go find a diner?"

"Fuck, no." He shuffles to the bedroom door, scratching the back of his head. "Not for at least...two hours. No. Three. Miss the lunch rush."

"Three hours." She nods and carefully makes her way into the bathroom, letting the blanket drop to the floor once she's safely over the threshold. "I might be ready to think about food by then."

A gray terrycloth robe is hanging on a hook on the back of the door; she puts it on and stares at herself in the mirror. Her reflection is wide-eyed and apparently shocked at her own behavior. "Me too," she tells it, turning the water on and hopelessly poking through Gabe's drawers for anything that could be adapted to hold her hair back. Nothing. Shit.

Getting the layer of makeup off her face is worth getting her hair wet, though. Gabe has really nice facial soap tucked away at the bottom of his dopp kit. It smells like lemons.

"I'm stealing your soap," she says when she comes out into the bedroom and finds him facedown on the bed again. "I bet it's good for a little aromatherapy wake-up kind of thing in the morning."

"You are really, really talkative for a girl who should be hungover as shit."

She makes a face, catching her tongue between her teeth so she won't stick it out at him. "I am. Just not as bad as you."

"Right. You've still got the metabolism of a teenager."

"I'm twenty-two." She sits down on the edge of the bed, frowning down at the bathrobe. It's stupidly long on her. That plus no makeup and crazy hair, it's probably a good thing he isn't looking at her, or he'd be drowning in regret.

"Close enough." He reaches blindly out to the side and grabs the Tylenol from the table. "Here. Coffee pot's going."

She dry-swallows two and sits there for a minute, studying the line of his back and the way his hair curls against his neck. She can remember how those curls felt against her fingers, heavy and damp with sweat. She remembers his hands around her waist, almost broad enough to span all the way around, and the easy way he swung her up off the ground and lifted her over something gross on the sidewalk.

Her head wants to make that kind of stupid-romantic. It's hard to remind herself that it wasn't, not really. It was mostly just gross.

"Do you want me to leave?" she asks, drawing her knees up to her chest. He turns his head to the side and blinks at her, then reaches out to catch the belt of the bathrobe between his fingers, rubbing at it slowly.

"No. Of course not."

"But this is awkward and weird."

"Well, it's..."

She waits for what feels like a really long time, maybe a full minute, before she finishes that for him. "Awkward and weird."

He sighs and sits up, putting a pillow across his lap with such utter seriousness that she has to laugh. "What?" he asks, frowning.

"We had sex last night."

She laughs again as she says it, but he's definitely not smiling. "Wow, I'm not used to girls finding that funny."

"I just mean it's a little late for modesty." She gestures at his lap.

"You have my robe." He presses the pillow tighter against himself. "And I feel weird with my dick just, like, flapping around."

"You don't have anything to be self-conscious about. I mean. It's very..." She trails off at the look on his face. "Um."

"Now is just really, really not the time for any discussion of my...attributes." He takes a deep breath and stares up at the ceiling for a minute. "Coffee."

"Should we go do that?"

"I'll bring it back here. Don't move."

Men are weird, she thinks, sitting there waiting patiently in his bed, wearing his robe, smelling like his face soap and with his stubble burn on her thighs. All of those things should be pretty clear and unarguable clues that she wants to be here, but he's running away like a scared squirrel. Only more complicated, because she knows how to lure squirrels in with a bit of pretzel. Any references to "soft pretzels" here are probably going to get another huffy fit.

He comes back in with a mug of coffee in each hand, brow furrowed in concentration, and she immediately thinks _flapping_ and claps her hand over her mouth before she can burst out laughing. He gives her a grim look and hands her her coffee, sitting down and settling the pillow over his lap again before he speaks. "It's not funny."

"I'm not laughing at you."

"You're thinking about it." He takes a long drink, then leans forward slowly to rest his forehead against the mattress. His back pops loudly enough that she winces and reaches to touch it, catching herself just before her fingers meet skin.

"About last night," he says, his voice muffled.

She brings her hand back to her lap, twisting the belt around it. "I had fun."

"So did I." He turns his head enough to peer sideways at her. "And we're talking about the same thing, right?"

She rolls her eyes. "Yes."

"Awesome." He returns his head to center, staring at either the mattress or his own torso. "So. We really can't do that, you know. Not again."

Even though she was just thinking the same thing, _hearing_ it sends a sharp flash of contrary anger through her. "Why not?"

He closes his eyes. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. Seriously. Why not? And sit up to talk to me, what are you even doing down there? Talking to Flappy?"

He lifts his head slowly and stares at her. "Never, ever call it that again. I'm not yelling, I'm begging, here."

She nods and hides her smile behind her coffee, drinking until she can present a straight face. "Sorry. That was mean."

"Yes." He sits up, though, dragging his free hand through his hair. "And as for why we can't...well, there's the obvious."

"I don't see an obvious."

"You're too young."

"I'm twenty-two," she counters. "And you fucked me last night anyway, so if that was going to matter it should have come up a little sooner than this."

"There's a special dispensation for club hook-ups."

"No there isn't."

"How would you know? You're an infant."

"And you're an asshole." She slams her mug down on the bedside table and scrambles off the bed, tugging the neckline of the robe together. "Fuck you."

"Bebe."

"Give me the _real_ reason. Don't bullshit me."

"Fine." He sets his own mug down and waves his hands at her. "What do you think Pete would say?"

"Pete isn't my dad!"

"No, but he's my friend."

She shakes her head, turning away before her face betrays her more than it should. She doesn't even know why they're having this argument. She's not into him. She's just sick and tired of being told to be quiet and sit down somewhere. She wants to have something, she wants to _win_ a fucking argument for once. "He doesn't have any right to tell either of us what to do."

"I don't want to hurt him. He's sensitive. You know that."

She shrugs and grabs her club top and skirt off the floor. "Sure."

"You _know_ all this, Bebe."

"Yeah, Gabe. I do." She's sensitive, too. She gets hurt, too. Apparently that's not high on the list of priorities, though. Figures.

He watches her get dressed without a word, catching the robe from mid-air when she tosses it at him. It isn't until she has her heels on again and is ready to do her walk of shame that he speaks.

"I do still want to be friends."

She snorts and shakes her head, keeping her eyes fixed down inside her purse. "Yeah, I can tell."

"Hey. I do. Believe me, if it weren't for Pete..."

There's just enough honesty in his voice that she looks at him, and his eyes make her shoulders slump a little. Fuck. She can't even stay mad. This is why she never wins anything.

"He just got put back together," Gabe says softly. "I can't knock the whole damn Jenga game over."

"But we can be friends."

"Yeah. Of course. He loves people being friends. He doesn't get weird about that." He stands up and shrugs into the robe, and she forces herself not to take one last glance at any attributes that she's not allowed to nickname. "Besides, I still owe you two drinks, huh?"

"That's right." She shrugs her purse onto her shoulder and puts on her stage smile. "You do."

**

He calls her three nights later, when she's curled up on her bed with her laptop and her notebook, scribbling down lyrics and crossing them out again with every iteration she runs through Garage Band.

"Hi," he says, and she can hear the slowness of booze on his tongue. Not the vodka and Red Bull buzz that gets him up and running, but something warmer and more mellow, something to bring him down.

"Hi." She closes her laptop and sits up, giving the phone a suspicious side-eye as she leans back against the headboard. "What's up?"

"I was thinking about those drinks I owe you. Wondering if you want to collect."

"I'm already in my pajamas."

"'s cool. We don't have to go anywhere fancy. There are chill bars. There's my place."

It takes a minute for her to get it, and she almost drops the phone. "Is this a booty call?"

There's a slight pause. "Do people your age really still call it that?"

"Oh my God."

"I just want to have a couple drinks with you." He sounds somewhere between charming and whiny. She remembers a word vaguely from one of her English classes--wheedling. That's what he's trying to do. Wheedle her.

"I'm in Staten Island, Gabe. I'm not coming into the city tonight."

"I could meet you halfway."

"No."

He's silent for a long moment, then clears his throat roughly. "God, I'm sorry. Of course not. I...fuck, I'm such a douche."

"You're not a douche." He is a douche. She apparently has a soft spot for it. She closes her eyes and thumps her head back against the headboard. "Look..."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize." She curls her toes against the sheets and thinks _fuck it_ , this wasn't in the plan, but it's not like anything ever goes according to plan anyway. "I'm not coming up tonight, but I could meet you for doughnuts in the morning."

"Doughnuts."

"Yeah. That place we went to before. Those were awesome."

"Could we go to the diner instead?"

"No. I want doughnuts."

He laughs, soft and low and she wonders what he was drinking, what gave his voice all those rounded edges. "Okay, okay. Lady's choice. Whatever you want."

She smiles, even though there's nobody there to see it, even though nobody would get why. "I'll see you in the morning."

**

Doughnuts turns into doughnuts and a movie, turns into dinner, turns into drinks. She doesn't go home with him, but she thinks about him all the way back to Staten Island. He's distracting--ridiculously tall compared to her, his loud, bright laugh, the way he gets intense mid-conversation when he finds a topic he can really hook into. She just knew him as Pete's friend who liked to wear pants that were a little too short and who fronted Cobra like strutting and teasing was the most natural thing in the world. She wasn't expecting him to pivot subjects into philosophy, world events, or the history of pop music.

 _Boy bands_ , she texts him from her bed the next morning, scrolling through the e-mail of YouTube links he sent her. _Really?_

 _You can learn a lot from boy bands. lyrics. dance breaks. how to get a response right from the audience's wet squishy places._

 _You're gross_

 _Watch all of those & then tell me I'm wrong._

He isn't wrong. She isn't sure the wet squishy places are exactly what she and Pete are aiming for, but it can't hurt to stash the information away.

 _Next up, the complete history of Madonna_ , Gabe texts when she grudgingly admits he was right. _Ignore the fashion, concentrate on the swagger. It wasn't called swagger then. But it so is._

 _I didn't realize I hired you as a career coach._

 _Oh, am I getting paid? :)_

She runs her fingers through her hair, both hands at once, staring down at the screen. This is a dumb jump to make. He's already told her no. But the signals have been profoundly mixed, and what's the worst that can happen, anyway?

 _I'll buy you two drinks,_ she answers. _Name the place and time._

**

Gabe's a good listener. He doesn't act like he is--there's constant twitching, checking his phone, looking around the bar--but he never misses a word.

"I want to be awesome," she says, stabbing the ice in the bottom of her cup over and over again with the little stirrer. "I want people to know who I am. If I hadn't met Pete I had a whole plan, right, I was going to claw my way up like a cat."

"Being famous isn't the same as being good." He smirks and takes a drink. "Trust me on that one."

"I didn't say famous or good. I said awesome and known."

"Oh, right. Totally different." The way he says it, she knows he's not making fun of her. He gets it. She doesn't always think Pete even gets it, but Gabe does.

The waitress sweeps her empty glass away and replaces it with a full one. Bebe stabs at that one, too, and splashes liquor over her fingers. "I don't think he remembers what it's like," she says, licking them clean.

Gabe's looking at his phone again, tapping out a text. "Who? Pete?"

"Yeah. He doesn't remember what it's like to _want_ stuff. He's all...comfortable and nostalgic and just playing around, but I'm _not_ playing, I want to _do_ something."

He lifts his eyes from the phone and looks at her for a long moment. "I think you're kind of wrong there."

She glares at him, which seems to make no impression at all. Fuck, if only she could hate older guys as much as they deserve. "Really."

"Kind of a lot."

"Well, then why does he--"

"He's afraid of fucking up, B. Fucking you up." He looks back at the screen again, and his leg slides against hers under the table. She takes a sip of her drink and holds it in her mouth until she has to breathe. "Also, he's just super-annoying. Don't take it personally."

"Does he pull that kind of shit with you?"

"No." He shoves his phone back in his pocket and stretches his arms over his head, lacing his fingers together. It's distracting. "But him and me, we've got a different thing, you know? There's no mentor shit going on. I knew what I was doing while he was still pissing the bed."

She snorts and shakes her head, swirling her drink. "And you're modest, too."

"Never be modest." His voice is sharp, but when she looks up, he's smiling. "There's some more career coaching for you, so you owe me another drink. Never be modest. You want people to think you're awesome? You've gotta _know_ you're awesome."

She lets him have his moment before she rolls her eyes. "That's really fucking cliché, you know."

He laughs and shakes his head, his leg brushing hers again slowly enough that she's sure it's on purpose. "You're a hard one, B."

"I'm learning from the best."

"Hell yeah." He hooks her ankle with his, drawing her legs toward him under the table. "Flattery's gonna get you everywhere."

Mixed signals again, all over the place, but she doesn't want to argue. She wants to play.

**

A routine comes together without either of them exactly trying; it's never a firm, decided action, always little choices that couldn't possibly hurt on their own. They fit together one by one until she's having breakfast with him at least once a week and usually more. He's taking her to bars that range from hopelessly classy to genuinely disgusting. They dance in shitty overexposed clubs and then sit at a diner until three AM while he talks his way through a gospel, a manifesto, a PhD thesis of dubstep.

She goes home with him after that, for the first time since the first time. This time they're both sobered up, fully aware, and they take their time with it. He lays her out on the bed like she's art, undresses her with fingers that tickle and tease and then soothe just before she jerks away from the stimulation. He kisses everywhere but where she wants him to, tasting her ankles and the curve of her knee, her wrist and the hollow beneath her sternum, the hinge of her jaw and the curve of her hip before he goes anywhere near her face or her cunt. It's infuriating. It's amazing. It makes her wet and shaky and leaves her cussing him out as he laughs and braces himself over her and finally covers her mouth with his.

"Sassy," he murmurs, kissing her again, his hands settling loosely over her wrists. Not quite pinning her down, but hinting at it. "I like sassy."

"You like girls to swear at you in bed?"

"Kinda. I like girls with a little bit of spark." He bites her lower lip, then sucks at it, his eyes half-closed, and she knows her own eyes should be as well but she can't help staring up at him. There are smudged shadows under his eyes, delicate skin gone dark purple from lack of sleep and too much thinking. She wiggles one wrist free and reaches up, tracing her thumb slowly across.

"What?" he asks, smiling, and she shakes her head, sliding her hand to the back of his skull and tangling her fingers in his hair. She pulls him down for another kiss and this time he lets his body settle against hers, heavy and warm, cradled between her bent knees and damp thighs.

He mouths down her neck until he finds the spot that makes her shiver and writhe under him, instincts trying to escape and brain insisting that she not ever, ever move. His breath is hot and his tongue is wet against her skin, the scrape of his teeth sending flashes of white across her vision, and she doesn't realize that all of that's just a distraction and a cover until he's palming the back of her thigh, coaxing it further up and over, and his fingers are teasing against her.

She exhales and tilts her head back, disturbing his mouth from its work but finally getting enough air. "You're a tease."

"I've heard that before." He rubs his fingers against her, slicking them, applying just enough pressure that it makes her hips want to buck. "Some people have called me a trickster, even."

"Who's called you that?"

"Actually just this one girl I dated in college." He wrinkles his nose at her, charming and ridiculous and gorgeous and she would kiss him again except that he's finally, finally pushing his fingers inside her, transforming the electricity of the teasing into something heavy and real that she desperately wants. He works her open slowly, stroking deeper with each push, turning his knuckles across that cluster of nerves that makes her go helpless and noisy and weak.

Her knees grip against his shoulders and he kisses her again, over and over, until she crosses her ankles behind his back, riding down on his fingers and cursing silently, in her head. _Fuck_ him and his experience, fuck him knowing what to do, knowing how to melt her like this. Fuck him and make him never, ever stop fucking her.

"I wanna hear you," he tells her when he finally pulls away, wiping his slick fingers on the sheets before he fumbles a condom from the bedside table and tears it open with his teeth. "I want you to use all of those gorgeous octaves of yours, baby girl, I want you to fucking--"

"Shut up." She grabs his wrist and guides him down and in, shuddering at the renewed sensation, sweeter for the break.

"Ask me nicely," he says, holding still for a desperate second, looking down into her eyes.

She wants to laugh, but she isn't sure she can breathe if he doesn't start to move. "Shut up, _please_."

And it's like when they were dancing, all over again, a little bit wrong and a little bit stupidly hedonistic and a whole lot cliché, but they fit.

**

So this is secretly dating. It sounds like something out of a movie or an old-timey novel. The reality doesn't have nearly as much sneaking around and lying as the fictional versions indicate: they're both busy enough that their friends accept _got other plans_ without pushing for details. The city is big enough that they have freedom if they plan ahead even a little bit: their friends tend to stick to this neighborhood and that one, so they will go to neighborhood three, rotating to four after a week just to be extra-safe, and they'll never get caught at all. Neither of them is famous enough to be photographed without arranging it in advance.

Breakfast, bars, dancing, his apartment. He brings her omelettes in bed; she brings him toast, if she gets up first, and they both can handle the coffee. Sometimes they spend a whole day sitting on his couch, both wearing his t-shirts and boxers, eating cereal with soy milk and marathoning _Sex and the City_ or _True Blood_ or whatever comes up first on Netflix.

She discovers that her head fits perfectly in his lap, her cheek pressed against one thigh while the other fills the curve of her neck and his fingers card slowly and gently through her hair. She discovers that she likes being petted, likes his broad hands sliding along her spine or the back of her neck. She discovers that he likes slow, not-necessarily-building kisses in the morning, and that when he asks for her opinion he wants an actual opinion, not dissembling or redirecting the question back to him. She discovers that arguing can be foreplay and that when he's being a jerk, the best way to deflate him is to actually call him on it and not give an inch.

She doesn't know what to do with any of these things. They're brightly-colored, lovely pieces of painted clay or maybe glass, and she feels like she's just spreading them out on a table somewhere and looking at them, every day. None of them fit together into anything, or if they do, she can't see the pattern yet.

But maybe just enjoying the beauty, for now, is the point.

**

"I gotta know who she is, man," Pete says, his eyes flashing playful and bright above his broad, too-white grin-- _must have hit the dentist this weekend_ , Bebe thinks vaguely, which is her cue that she needs to do that, too, following Pete's schedule a week displaced--and darting toward his phone between sentences, like looking at Gabe's voice will let him see Gabe. "C'mon, you can tell me. Who's the girl?"

Bebe turns a page in her magazine, staring down at the glossy paper and smooth ink without really seeing it. She's got no right for her stomach to hitch or her eyebrows to want to raise. She should focus on tooth-whitening and the nail polish of the month. On getting Pete to listen to the demos she and Heather laid down. On which flavor of cup-a-soup she's going to have for dinner, since lately if she eats anything more than that before a show she'll throw it up again from nerves.

"Fuck you, I _know_ there's a girl! I know you! This is the way you act when you've got somebody in your life who's, like, super-awesome." Pete stops, his brow furrowing, and Bebe tries to imagine Gabe's tone of voice as he answers. Probably the stern, bossy one she never lets him pull on her. Pete takes it. Pete _likes_ it, she strongly expects. He likes structure. "Aw, c'mon. That's not fair." Another pause, and his shoulders ease a little. Whatever Gabe's telling him, it's hitting the points that need reassuring. Gabe's a good friend. "Okay, okay. You win. Talk to you soon, okay? Love you, brother."

Pete flops down next to her, phone still in hand, already scrolling to the next thing. She doesn't look closely enough to see if it's text or Twitter or Angry Birds. "Bebe, that dude is lying to me."

The nail polish of the month is stupendously ugly. "I'm sure he'll tell you when he wants you to know."

"He's _with_ somebody. I know it. I can tell. And she's somebody who challenges him. Pushes him. Doesn't take any shit." He chews on his thumbnail for a moment, and she glances at him. His eyes are unfocused the way they get when he's deep in thought and might actually be putting two and two together. "I wonder if he's talking to Bianca again."

Her shoulders slump in relief, but she doesn't have to hide it because he's already bounced back to his feet and headed across the room again, fingers tapping away at the screen. "I'm gonna get Spencer down here, huh? We should all hang out. Party. Get our rage on. God, I'm all jumpy. Are you jumpy? It's warm in here."

She turns another page and studies the best new body-shaping bras like her life depends on it. Maybe this is where the secret-dating drama and excitement comes from; not the act itself but the negative space around the act, when everything has to look like there's nothing there.

**

She's got nothing going on, not even playing around in the studio; the album is _finally_ , finally, to bed, or so Pete assures her over and over again. No one can blame her for being skeptical, she's pretty sure; she's heard this so many times before. But this time Pete tells her to take time off, relax, have fun. "Be a kid," is his final order before hangs up the phone. "Act your age. Don't go anywhere near a studio."

She isn't sure if he would consider "living on Gabe's couch in her pajamas" to be acting her age or not, but it's working out pretty well for her, at least for the first week. It's not as much of a setup for debauchery as some people might think; Gabe is pretty committed to keeping sex in the bedroom. On the bed. He won't even shower with her, because showers are for getting clean, not fooling around, like kitchens are for cooking and floors are for walking on, apparently. He's so weird.

She's clicking around on her laptop, trying to decide if she wants to buy boots from the "equestrian" or "dominatrix" categories, when he sits down next to her and says "Hey, so I've got a show in Vegas Wednesday night."

"A show-show?" She raises her eyebrows but doesn't look up from the screen. "Singing, dancing, girls on a flying trapeze?"

"Dork." He leans in and squints at the images. "The ones with the buckles. And no. DJ gig."

"The buckles? You think? I kinda like the flats."

"Depends on if you want height or not, I guess."

"True. I need all of it I can get. So you and Ryland are going to Vegas?"

"Just me. Solo gig. And I like you tiny."

"You would." She frowns at the flat boots again. "So are you telling me I need to go home by Wednesday?"

"No, B." He presses a kiss to her shoulder. "I'm asking if you want to come with me."

"Oh." She closes the laptop and looks at him, blinking. "For real?"

"Well, yeah. Why not? I'll do the gig, we'll stay an extra day or two, do all the Vegas stuff."

"Right." She nods for a minute. "Gambling...I guess we'll cover dancing when you do your gig...and what else? Strippers? Cirque du Soleil?"

"No. Those are stupid." He bites her shoulder lightly, looking up through his lashes. "Crazy monkey sex. In a really nice hotel."

She laughs and he grins, moving in for a kiss that she doesn't try very hard to dodge. "Oh, in _that_ case. Sign me up."

**

She goes to check into the hotel when they get to Vegas, while he takes a cab up the Strip to drop his DJ equipment at the club and look over the setup. He isn't back by the time she has their stuff upstairs and settled in, so she goes down to the shopping level of the hotel, wandering through stores until she comes to one featuring fancy, tiny lingerie.

She's figured out the outlines of Gabe's taste by now, which are kind of delightfully straightforward. He likes things that are silky or lacy, bold colors, and ideally that are held closed with ribbons or zippers instead of snaps. Things with snaps are probably going to get ripped in the process of being removed. He has trashed more than one of her cheaper fake-corset tops that way.

She chooses a set of panties, suspenders, and a babydoll in dark, vivid green. She puts them on and stretches out on the bed, enjoying the moment of role-play and fantasy, like she's a character from an old movie. A temptress waiting to seduce a gangster or a mogul and steal all of his money. Or maybe a spy. That might be even more fun, a spy who's going to get information out of him one way or another. She should text and tell him to be in character when he gets back.

She rolls over to the edge of the bed, flipping her hair dramatically, then falls off the bed as her phone rings before she can reach for it.

"Hey," Gabe whispers when she answers from the floor. "Hey, babe, sorry, just--total change of plans."

"What? What's going on?"

"Well, um. It's sort of--"

She frowns, tugging a pillow against her chest."Why are you whispering?"

"I'm in the bathroom."

"What? Why?" She remembers some of Pete and Spencer's jokes from on tour and jerks the phone away from her ear. "Is this some kind of weird kinky shit?"

"What? No." He huffs in frustration and she hears a dim thump; probably he's hitting the wall. "Pete is here."

"What?"

"Okay, we both have to agree to stop saying 'what.'"

"Gabe!" She takes a breath and climbs back onto the bed, sitting cross-legged with her pretty clothes getting all twisted up under her. "Why is he here?"

"Apparently he's DJing someplace tomorrow night."

"Then why is he here _now_?"

"He saw my Tweet about flying out here and came a day early to hang."

She lies down on her back, staring at the ridiculous, stupid floral arrangement on the bedside table. "He just wanted to hang."

"Ashlee has the little dude this week. I think he's lonely."

"So what are we going to do?"

"Well, I can't ditch him."

She knows she's about to ask a stupid question, but for the same reason she keeps fucking Gabe, she asks it anyway. "Why not?"

"That would sort of be a giant flaming giveaway, wouldn't it?"

"Right. Right." She gives the floral arrangement the finger and turns onto her side. "Well. Have fun. I guess I'll get dressed again and go down to the casino and get hammered on free drinks."

"Wait, you're naked?"

She looks down at the ribbons and silk that are about to get discarded as a pretty, tiny waste of time. "I bought lingerie."

He exhales sharply, loud against the phone. "Son of a _bitch_."

"Don't keep Pete waiting," she says, half-teasing and half not at all, and hangs up.

**

When she wakes up the next morning, Gabe's asleep in the chair by the window. She slips out of bed and crosses the floor on her tiptoes, standing in front of him and studying him for evidence of the night before. He smells like stale sweat and there are the sticky remains of a few spilled drinks across his shirt. _G-A-B-E GONNA GET YOU HIGH_ is written in inch-high letters up his arm, in a scrawl she instantly recognizes as Pete's. Apparently the bros went on the town after his set.

There are two shopping bags beside his chair, but she ignores them, climbing up to straddle his thighs. He chokes in his sleep, gasping and coughing roughly as he wakes up, blinking at her. "Bebe?"

"Good morning, sunshine," she says, running her hands down his chest and then up again before she starts to unbutton his shirt. "Did he write on you anywhere else?"

"There's a Gabey Baby on the back of my neck, I think," he mumbles, letting his head thump back against the chair. "How was your night?"

"I won two hundred dollars."

"Fucking awesome."

"Mm. So breakfast's on me." She gets his shirt open to the bottom and kisses the center of his chest. "Did you have fun?"

"Yeah. Was a good night." She waits patiently, running her nails over the flat, questionable muscles of his pecs in not-quite-warning until he catches on. "I missed you, though."

"I missed you too." She kisses him again and then slides off the chair, moving back over to the bed. "Are you going to his set tonight?"

"No. I told him I was headed back home."

He lied to Pete for her. That's both sweet and, she suspects, proof that they might be bad people. "So we have the whole day and night to ourselves."

"Yeah."

"For sure this time."

He smiles a little, watching her with half-closed, sleepy eyes. "Yeah."

She stretches her arms up over her head, trying not to feel smug. If she was a good person, she'd be encouraging him to be honest; Pete's her friend, too, after all. Still. It's really fucking _satisfying_ to have him put her first. "I think we should go back to bed for an hour or two, then go swimming."

His brow furrows. "You want to go swimming?"

"Then hit the spa, and lunch in there somewhere, and then maybe going to look at the wax museum, because those statues are creepy and I love it."

"Bebe..."

"What?" She gives him her best wide-eyed innocent face. "Don't you want to have fun?"

"Well, I just thought..." He hesitates, mouth open a little and a pained look on his face. "I mean, you said something about sexy lingerie..."

She rolls her eyes and grins at him, rising up on her knees and doing a slow, deliberate bend back toward the mattress. "That's for tonight, dummy. I'm talking about all day _before_ that. Duh."

"Oh right." He gets up from the chair and walks over to the bed, setting the shopping bags down beside her. "Why don't you check these out then, chica with the plan?"

Bag number one has two bottles of what she assumes is very nice champagne; she really doesn't have anything to measure it against. Bag number two is a pair of sparkly silver shoes with a label that sends her eyebrows up.

"Fell off a truck," he says with a little smile. "Do they fit?"

She lies down on her back again, swinging her legs up in the air and slipping them on one at a time. They fit perfectly, and after she slips the last buckle in place she kicks her feet back and forth in lazy arcs, admiring them.

When she looks up again, smiling, ready to tell him thank you, the look on his face stops her. It's not the playful lust she's used to, not the warm friendliness, not even the sharp intensity that feels like he _gets_ her more than she ever really gave permission for. This is something else. "Gabe?"

"Let's revise that schedule a little," he says, his voice husky and dark. "C'mere, baby girl."

**

The day goes pretty much according to her plan, except that they move the swimming to the cool of the evening, and end up back in their room with wet hair and the heavy smell of chlorine joining them for room service. Gabe cracks open the first bottle of champagne while she parades around the room in a beach towel and her silver shoes, singing an abridged medley of Rihanna's greatest hits.

"I'm not doing Guilty Pleasure for you," he says, handing over her glass, "but if you ask nice I'll break out some Midtown."

"I've never heard any Midtown," she says, taking a drink and feeling the bubbles dance down her throat.

"Of course you haven't." He laughs, balancing his glass in his palm like he's going to use it to tell a fortune. "I bet you haven't even heard _of_ Midtown."

"You have no idea how much Pete talks when he can't sleep." She sits down on the bed and unbuckles her shoes, then kicks them off and curls her legs under herself. "I know all about it. I just, like...well, I know you _now_. I like you now. Why would I want to go all the way back? What am I going to get from that? I know the parts you kept."

The champagne is distracting for a minute, and she doesn't realize how still he's sitting until he moves again. He leans in and kisses her, steadying her glass easily as he guides her between his knees and wraps his other hand around her waist, holding her close against him.

When he lets go again, he doesn't meet her eyes, just turns for the bottle again. "Let's celebrate, B. We've got two bottles worth of celebrating to do and it's gonna be awesome."

"What exactly are we celebrating?"

"Life. Liberty. Vegas. Those shoes. Fuck if I know." He fills her glass and then brings the bottle to his own mouth, taking three long, deep swallows that break off into a gasp. "Everything."

**

Two bottles is an intense celebration, it turns out.

"Bebe," he whispers in her ear, breath hot and welcome against her neck. "Bebe. I wanna...I wanna tell you something, okay?"

"What?" She leans back against his chest, enjoying the warmth of him. He's skinny as shit, but he's _warm_. It's awesome.

"I wanna get married." He's mumbling into her hair now, so it takes her a minute to be sure she heard that right. "I wanna family. I wanna have kids. Babies. Fat little babies to kiss and hold and love. I want...I want that _stuff_. All that stuff. Baby stuff. Family stuff."

"Are you proposing right now?"

"No! Maybe. I don't...I just want you to _know_ , okay, that I'm not, like, I'm not playing games. I'm not screwing around. I want...I want a family. I want the stuff. So...so we should both, like, know that. We should know what's going on with me."

She nods slowly, stupidly, staring at the empty bottles of champagne lying together on the bedside table. "Okay."

"And this is my last tour."

"What?"

"Cobra. Last tour." He wraps his arm around her waist and hugs her tightly back against him. "We're...we're done after this one. Goin' on indefinite hiatus just like everybody else. We're tired."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. 's not a big deal. We always knew there was a shelf life, from day one, and it's...we're ready. It's time."

She reaches up and strokes his cheek, tracing the stubble. "You're okay?"

"I'm okay. I'm good." He leans into her touch, closing his eyes tightly. "But, like, I was just thinking how that means it could be _time_ , you know? As good a time as any. For all that stuff."

"You won't be on the road all the time, so you can do the wife and kids thing."

"Yeah."

She knows, in a distant kind of way that's all shimmery with champagne, that she's going to be defending this decision for a long, long time to many, many people.

She doesn't care, and that's how she knows it's a _good_ decision. All the pieces and the clichés and the lights and the liquor--that's all _them_. That's how they fit.

**

They both left their phones in the room, which on the plus side means that neither of them Tweeted any pictures. On the minus, it means that they have no actual photographic proof of what happened when they wake up in the morning and grind the edge off their hangovers with coffee.

The matching set of silver wedding bands on their fingers and the marriage certificate lying on top of the TV are pretty solid evidence, though.

"Okay," Bebe says, staring at her ring like it's going to pop up with the talking paperclip from Microsoft Word and explain everything. "So...we got married." Gabe mumbles something into his coffee cup. "What?"

"I said is there a receipt."

"I don't know. Why would there be a receipt?"

"I just..." He pokes through her purse, which for some reason was in the bed with them--maybe she's glad there aren't any photos, actually--and comes up with a folded sheet of paper, then squints at it miserably for a minute before nodding and tossing it to the bed. "Okay, good."

"What? What's good?"

"I wanted to make sure we at least, like, sort of made a gesture toward Judaism."

"Did we?"

"Yeah. Apparently we paid extra for a chuppah and breaking a glass." He leans back against the pillows with a groan. "No ketuba, but at least I can tell my parents I stepped on a fuckin' glass."

"We're telling our parents?"

That gets his eyes open. "Why would we not?"

"Well, I mean...you're sure...we're going to keep it?"

"It's not a dog," he says, clutching his coffee cup to his chest. "It's a marriage."

"Right, but it's a spontaneous Vegas marriage."

"Wow." He takes a sip of coffee and looks away, the stark whiteness of the pillowcases accenting the hungover-tinge to his skin and the dark circles under his eyes. "Well, okay, then."

"I mean, I need some time to think about this. Probably we both do, right? I mean, most people do that part first, but we're just, like...unique." She wants to laugh at her own words, she can _hear_ herself being ridiculous, but she has a feeling if she laughs right now and he's hurt, things are going to blow up in a way that's really, really bad.

But he starts laughing first. She didn't expect that, but it makes the tension ease in her chest.

"Wow." He looks up at the ceiling, rubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. "Wow, we're a pair. Okay."

She watches him for a minute, letting the memories of last night slip into place in her head. Confessions and secrets and promises and vows.

"How about six weeks?" he asks, looking at her again. "We'll sit down and figure it out after my tour."

"That's perfect." She crawls up the bed to sit beside him, then slides her arm around his waist and leans into him, closing her eyes. "Your last tour."

"You remember that part."

"I do."

He snorts, his body jerking under her arm. "Gotta be careful throwing those two little words around, huh?"

She slaps him on the stomach and snuggles closer, more tension leaving her body as he sets his cup aside and wraps her up in his arms. "Dork."

"Brat."

"Horse face."

"Bumble bee."

She kind of wants to say _I love you_ , but there's doing things out of order and then there's just being unkind. And she's got time. Six weeks, at least. All the time in the world.

**

Pete calls her out to LA two weeks into Cobra's tour. She hasn't been moping, but mostly that's because she hasn't been really thinking about any of it at all. She's been avoiding with all her heart. Not the strategy they agreed on, but she's going back and forth between feeling like she knows what she wants and feeling like she's selling out everything _else_ she wants so hard she has whiplash.

The studio's distracting in the best possible way. It's just a few overlays for final-final-final vocals, on the album that _really is_ coming out in two months, Eric Wong has _promised_ them up down and sideways. It only takes two days.

When they wrap it up, Pete takes her out to dinner somewhere fancy. He wears a tie, and she puts on her silver shoes, tucking the chain she's been wearing her ring on down under the collar of her dress. Pete orders them a bottle of something fancy and they sit in silence for a while.

Pete looks tired, even more than usual. It makes sense once she thinks about it; he's been basically in labor with this album for over a year, shielding her from the worst of it all the way through.

And of course there's the thing where his singer and his best friend have been cheerfully lying to him for months. She pushes her glass away before she can drown in guilt and champagne. Ever since Gabe told her she wasn't giving Pete enough credit, she's been trying to do a little more of seeing things from his side. It still isn't quite a natural fit, but she's less impatient with him. He has reasons for acting the way he does.

Well, probably. Most of the time. He's also just really fucking annoying.

"So," he says, swirling his own glass slowly. "I've got an opportunity for you, B."

"Oh?"

"I'm gonna be totally honest, it's also a _promo_ opportunity." He makes a face. "This isn't pure altruism. Like it ever is, with me."

She knows by now when not to bother indulging his self-deprecation. "I would never assume."

He smiles a little, an awkward little twist of his mouth. "So, I know you're probably going to call me an old man, but you remember the Divas concerts? VH1 specials. Kind of a big deal for a while, then less of a big deal, but still. A thing."

"Yeah, sure." She's heard of them, anyway. Seen clips. She's hardly going to rub the old man thing in his face right now.

"Well, they're asking Pink to do one with up-and-coming vocalists. Divas, the next generation, or something like that."

She frowns, tapping her nails against the table. "Diva's not the word that comes to mind when I think of her."

"I know, right?" He grins and waves his glass at her, lighting up in an instant. "But that's the whole thing. They're trying to put a new spin on diva. Make it edgy and new. It's gonna be a big TV special, behind-the-scenes stuff of rehearsal, the whole bit. They were recruiting little-name singers from all genres, they really want it to have something other than the usual."

She thinks she can see where he's going with this, except he can't _possibly_ be going there with this.

"You're in," he says, still smiling as he takes an envelope out of his coat and lays it on the table in front of her. "You start rehearsal next week. They'll take care of everything, all you have to do is show up. Well. And you have to go down there tomorrow and sign all the legal stuff, but, you know. Once that bullshit's out of the way."

She stares at the paper, eyes too blurred with tears to read the legalese. Shit. Now she probably has to stop thinking of him as fucking annoying, too. "How did you..."

"I just sent them three tracks and a couple of concert videos, B." His voice is matter-of-fact, not even proud. "You sold them on you all by yourself."

She wipes her eyes and grins at him, holding the paper to her chest. "This is going to sell the hell out of the album."

"It's going to have you recording solo before my next haircut," he corrects, the smile going a little stiff and fading from his eyes.

She sticks her tongue out at him. "I'll never leave you."

He rolls his eyes and swats at her across the table, then waves at the waiter.

"Pete," she says, reaching for his hand. "Pete, I...you know I appreciate everything you've done for me, right?"

He looks either confused or suspicious. Sometimes it's hard to tell with him. "Dude. You're in my band."

"I know, but...you've gone above and beyond, you've had my back, you've looked out for me. I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful."

"That's what I'm for. Don't be weird."

"Pete..."

He shakes his head, shooting her another look and then touching the back of her hand, a fast, awkward slide of his fingers that reminds her he doesn't do emotions in non-written words, and he doesn't do them with her at all. He's her ticket up, and she's his getaway car. Everything else is subtext.

It works for them.

He takes his hand away and signals the waiter again. "C'mon. Order something decadent and ridiculous. The label's buying."

**

The concert's like stepping out of the real world and into an alternate dimension that's run as a fetish boot camp. She's reasonably sure that doing the assigned dance routines in the assigned shoes is a violation of the Geneva Convention. She hurts all over, having that many personalities shoved in one rehearsal room is a recipe for disaster, and the fire alarm goes off two hours before the performance, screwing them all out of their final prep time.

She's never had so much fun in her life.

She _understands_ everybody in that overcrowded rehearsal room. They all want the same thing, and they're all going after it flat-out. These are her people.

There's a moment during the live show--live to tape, anyway, but she just thinks of it as live-live, like any of the clubs and weird random stages she's played with Pete and Spencer--where she has a chance to catch her breath. She tilts her head back, looking up at the lights and then out at the space where the audience should be with eyes that are still dazzled.

She can't see them, but she can hear them. It feels like they're just there for her, and it feels right.

Then the music starts up again and she almost trips into the lanky alt-country redhead who shared cigarettes with her after every rehearsal, and she has to turn off everything but the routine.

Later, back in her hotel room after the afterparty and the interviews and the champagne, she ices her aching ankles and smiles at the series of messages on her phone. Pete and Spencer sent her flowers before the show, with a card that said they wished they were there with her. She'd smiled at them, but it figured that they wouldn't understand that half the thrill was being here on her own. They were pack animals. Puppies. She's something else.

Gabe didn't send anything. But there's a message on her phone, with a timestamp of just after they started filming. _I can tell you just started singing- felt the earth move! Break a leg bumble bee xoxo_

She lies back on the bed, settling her phone over her heart, and smiles up at the ceiling. She's young and she's stupid and she's free, and right now she owns the world, and she knows what she wants.

**

"There's my diva." Gabe drops his bag with a thud and pulls her into his arms. "Thousands of miles on a fuckin' plane and then the worst cab driver in the city and seeing you makes it all better."

"You're so full of shit." She hugs him tight, closing her eyes and breathing in the stale smell of sweat and hairspray. "I missed you."

"Missed you too. I got to see you workin' it onstage, though." He lets her go and picks up his bag again, stabbing at the button for the elevator. "You were by far the best diva of the group."

"I don't know, there was some pretty stiff competition."

"Nope. All of them were invisible compared to you. And terrible singers."

She rolls her eyes and follows him onto the elevator. "They were all really, really nice. Don't be a dick."

"Here I'm trying to give you a compliment." He hits the button for their floor and smiles at her over the top of his glasses. "I was really proud of you. You looked amazing. Sounded it, too."

"Thank you." She knows she's smiling too big, too much; not keeping her cool. She can't help it. "It was so amazing. The opportunity was just...I met _everybody_. I've had so many offers. It's really happening. All the...the magic. It's amazing."

"Yeah?" He looks at her for a long moment, eyes sharp and serious, before a mask slides across his features. "That's great. Let the managers take care of all the technical stuff, huh? The assholes won't hesitate to stab you in the guts if they think they see a chance. Let the people you pay to take the knives for you do it. That's my words of wisdom as a boring old guy."

"You're never boring."

"I don't hear you vetoing old." He winks and heads down the hall to the apartment, and she follows silently cursing to herself. He's all distant now. Weird. He jumped to conclusions and now she's going to have to coax him into listening to her again. Maybe she can just hit him over the head with something, or spike his drink.

No, no. Communication is required. Fine. If she has to.

"You want to order something in?" he asks, tossing his bag into the bedroom and veering back toward the couch. "I'd offer to go out, but I'm so fucking tired I'm seeing double. And I'm craving Thai like crazy. I don't even know."

"Yeah, that's fine." She crosses her arms over her chest and takes as deep a breath as she can manage. "Can we talk first?"

"I gotta get some water. My throat's, like, fucking raw, I swear. Thank God I'm never doing that again, though I guess if I hadn't known I wasn't doing it again, I wouldn't have blown it out quite so hard, maybe..."

She takes another breath and tells herself to be patient, be centered. "Get your water and then come back out here? I want to talk."

His shoulders are tense as he moves past her toward the kitchen. "Sure. Talking."

"It's important."

"I can tell."

"Don't make assumptions, okay?"

He stops at the kitchen entryway, one hand curled around the edge of the opening. "Just say it, huh?"

In her head, when she imagined this conversation, he was at least _looking_ at her. "I want to stay married."

His head jerks up and he stares at her, eyes gone wide. She silently counts off the seconds while his mouth works and no sound comes out.

"I thought..." he manages finally, "I thought with the...the showcase, and your career...you're ambitious as fuck, B., I thought..."

"Married women can have careers. They can be ambitious. Professionally I still want to be Bebe Rexha, though."

"Yeah. Yeah, of course." When she imagined this, there was more hugging at this point, possibly even kissing. He's still hanging on to the wall like it's all that's holding him up, though. "You...want to stay married to me."

"I love you." The earth doesn't shake or anything when she says it. His eyes get even bigger, though. "I've known it for...a while, I guess, but I really nailed it down while you were gone. I love you. I want to see if we can do this."

"I love you too." He finally lets go of the wall and steps toward her, holding out his hand. It feels right to take it. Even more right to rise up on her toes and claim his mouth. "I love you, too, Bebe."

"There's just...one thing," she manages between kisses, hating herself for stopping but knowing this _has_ to get out there, as soon as possible. "About kids."

His grip on her loosens a little, but he doesn't let go. He ducks his head and rests it against hers, his breathing rough. "You want to wait."

"Not...not necessarily." She swallows, tracing slow lines on his chest. "I don't want to _have_ kids. The...pregnancy part. I don't want to be pregnant. And I don't want to put my career on hold."

She knows without looking that his brow is furrowed and his eyes guarded. "Then what..."

"Adoption? Surrogacy?" She shrugs. "I don't know. We'll have to research the options. But...I know you really, really want this. And that you're not going to be working anymore, for a little while. So...does being a stay at home dad really sound like the _worst_ option in the world?"

He doesn't say anything, and her stomach sinks. When she brings herself to look up his jaw is tight and his eyes distant, flicking from side to side like he's trying to read his own thoughts. She takes a shaky breath and eases herself out of his arms.

"I'll go pick up food," she says softly. "Walk down to the place, wait for it, give you...give you some time? Like an hour. I'll walk slow. And I've got short little legs."

"Bebe, you don't--"

"I've had six weeks. The least I can do is give you an hour, since I went and did all the thinking and planning without you." She grabs her purse, careful not to look at him again. "You want your usual?"

"Yeah," he says softly, and she's out the door, biting her tongue to keep from asking if it doesn't mean anything that she knows what that his usual _is_.

**

She loops around the park twice before she comes back, so it's more like an hour and forty-five minutes. When she gets back inside, he's sitting on the couch with his laptop open, glaring intently down at the screen.

"Hey," she says softly, her voice catching in her throat. "I think we'll need to warm this all up again, sorry..."

"It's fine," he says, leaning in closer to the screen. "Shit, you know how much paperwork there is to adopt from Uruguay? I've got a leg up since I'm a citizen, but still, we're gonna be drowning in this shit for a while."

She sags a little against the coat rack. "Y-yeah?"

"All kinds of stuff. Oh, you don't mind if we raise them bilingual and Jewish, right? I mean, I can maybe be a little flexible on religion, but the language, that's their heritage, right, and I wanna be able to take them back to Uruguay and have them feel like it's home, too, so..."

"Language and religion are totally open."

He looks up and meets her eyes. "We're gonna have so many babies. I hope you're ready for this."

She starts laughing, and it quickly turns into a mixture of tears. He's across the room and wrapping her up in his arms before that can really bother her. "Not in the slightest," she manages to say, her voice muffled against his shoulder.

"We haven't been ready for any of this," he says, pressing a soft kiss against her hair. "But we've done okay."

"We'll figure it out together." She nods and wipes her eyes on his sleeve. "Right?"

"Yeah." He catches her chin and kisses her, slow and deep and warm. "Yeah, we will. In the future can I maybe get a vote a little earlier on, though?"

"I'll think about it." She leans into him and breathes for a minute, imagining being this close to him always, every morning, every time she's home. It feels good. They fit. "You know what that means," she says quietly.

"What's that?"

"First thing we have to figure out his how to tell Pete."

He laughs, shaking his head. "And our parents. And our friends."

"We're going to get yelled at so much."

"Shit, you have _no_ idea."

She takes her phone out of her pocket and spins it between her fingers. "We _could_ do it the easy, chickenshit way."

"Twitpic?"

"Twitpic." She takes her ring from her pocket and slips it on; he does the same. They clasp hands, leaning their heads in against each other, and she awkwardly stretches her arm out to snap the picture.

She sends it to him first, and they post it to Twitter simultaneously, hers with a message of _Surprise!!!_ and him with _Uh, mom and dad, something I forgot to tell you..._

Their phones light up with a text from Pete a minute later. _Dudes finally. Thought you'd never go public._

Bebe gets herself together to answer first. _You knew???_

 _You losers checked into Foursquare at the hotel. Both of you. It wasn't that hard to put two and two together. Not stupid. Also you wore your ring as a necklace, dummy._

Bebe closes her eyes tight and bangs her phone against her forehead. "Don't you dare laugh, Gabe."

He's giggling like an idiot, of course, so she kicks him until the phones buzz again. _Congratulations, by the way. I'm not getting you a present bc you lied._

"Fuck Pete Wentz," Gabe says, and Bebe shakes her head before leaning it against his shoulder.

"No, babe. We need him to be the godfather."

"For the whole clan?"

"Yeah."

"Including us?"

She laughs, tilting his head for a kiss. "Nope. We're in it just the two of us. Together."

EPILOGUE

Bebe shakes her hair back and smiles, waving at the screen. "Hi, guys! It's me."

"Hey, baby." Gabe's face grins out at her, too close, until he adjusts the camera. "Say hi to Mama, girls."

"Mamamamama!" Carmen reaches toward the camera with all of a toddler's demandingness, until her Papi gets his arm around her waist and tugs her back. "We miss you!"

"I miss you too. Are you guys having fun?"

"Si, si! We went to the museum today, and the park, and Flor cried because she was scared of a dog but I wasn't scared at all."

"Well, you're a big girl, honey, and Flor is just a baby." Flor looks supremely unconcerned with all of this right now, or anything besides trying to pull the buttons off of Gabe's shirt. Gabe is smiling as broadly as he has been for the entire last three years, since Carmen came home. Being a dad is the most fun he's had in his life. More fun than any tour he's ever been on, or so he says, including the ones where the court documents are still sealed.

"She's one year old," Carmen says sternly. "That's not a baby anymore. When Diego gets here, _he'll_ be a baby."

"Any word on that?" Bebe asks, glancing away from the screen as the door opens. She waves at Pete to close it again after he comes in.

"They're saying another month, now," Gabe says. She can hear the annoyance in his voice, carefully masked so the girls won't. She would bet the award she's up for tonight that he's been giving government officials hell on two continents.

"Be patient," she says, touching his face on the screen. "It'll work out. Nobody's going to get between us and our boy."

"Uncle Pete!" Carmen lunges in close to the camera again. "Uncle Pete, we're going to have a little brother."

"I know, dude." Pete leans over Bebe's shoulder. "It's gonna be awesome. I can't wait to meet him. Hey, Flor-flor! Hey, baby! You remember me?"

"She's afraid of your ugly mug," Gabe says as Flor turns her face against his neck. "Go scare somebody else, Wentz."

"I'm not scary. I'm goin' to the darn Grammys with your wife." He waggles his eyebrows and Gabe flips him off from next to Flor's head, his other hand on the back of Carmen's to keep it aimed at the camera.

"You're very good at editing cuss words on the fly," Bebe murmurs to him.

"Shit yeah I am," he mutters back, then lifts his voice again. "I'll signal you guys, okay? When we're doing the red carpet stuff, if I quack like a duck, that's me saying hi to Carmen and Flor back in New York City."

Carmen squeals in delight and Bebe rolls her eyes, meeting Gabe's on-screen and smiling with all her heart. Yeah. They've done okay.

"Call me in the morning, pretty lady," Gabe says, kissing his fingers and touching the camera.

"Only if I'm not hungover."

"Especially if you _are_." Gabe rolls his eyes. "Duh."

"Oh, right," she says, catching the kiss from the screen and touching it to her own lips, smiling at the little ritual. "You like me that way."


End file.
